NPR's Book of the Day

Our books today give the reader a peek into showbiz. Sarah Polley was a child actor but that led to her being put into many dangerous situations, which she details in her new memoir, Run Toward The Danger. She told NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer that she's not sure kids should be acting in a professional environment at all. Next, Isaac Butler deep dives into method acting in his new book The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. Butler told NPR's Scott Simon that method acting can create some beautiful performances but it's not an excuse to be terrible.

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At the center of author Naima Coster's novel What's Mine & Yours are two struggling mothers. Jade is a Black single mother who is trying to provide a better life for her son, and Lacey May is a white mother who is trying to give her daughters the life she never had. Their stories will intertwine over decades, starting with when Lacey May opposes the integration of her daughters' school – the same school Jade is trying to get her son into. Coster told NPR's Audie Cornish that fiction gives us a window into other people's lives but that does not mean we have to condone their actions.

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Somali British poet Warsan Shire has had many projects, including running a popular Tumblr page and collaborating with Beyoncé. Now, she is out with a new collection of poems called Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head. That title is an ode to how she was raised, having to take on a lot of responsibility from a young age. But Shire told NPR's Sarah McCammon that it's also an ode to the children who are able to turn those voices into their friends instead of struggling with them as she has.

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Author NoViolet Bulawayo's new novel Glory is quite openly based on Orwell's Animal Farm and the 2017 coup in Zimbabwe that ousted then president Robert Mugabe. Horses rule the country, dogs are the military, cows, goats, sheep, and pigs are the everyday people. The government that has been in control of the country Jidada for 40 years has fallen to rebellion. But, as these things go, it quickly turns sour. Bulawayo told NPR's Scott Simon that "it is simply an issue of the leadership kind of forgetting [...] why the people they – that fought to serve – made the sacrifice that they did."

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The former attorney general under former President Trump, William Barr, is out with a new memoir called One Damn Thing After Another. In it, he agrees with President Trump on many things: modern day culture wars and that the progressives are dividing the country. But Barr also gives his own version of the events of the Trump White House and disagrees with the former president about the "stolen election." Barr told NPR's Steve Inskeep "after the election, [Trump] didn't seem to listen to anybody except a group of sycophants who were telling him what he wanted to hear."

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Our interviews today are both children's books and even though they are about wildly different topics, they both aim to make reading more accessible for kids. Nikole Hannah Jones, with the help of Renee Watson, has turned the 1619 Project into a picture book called Born On The Water. They told NPR their goal was "to say to young people - to young Black Americans, you belong here." Next, Adam Rubin has written a collection of short stories that are all different but have the same title: The Ice Cream Machine. Rubin told NPR's Rachel Martin that there are so many ways to tell a story.

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Author Bernardine Evaristo wrote the Booker prize winning novel Girl, Woman, Other. But before she did, like way before, she was incredibly unsure of herself or how she - as someone with a Black father and white mother - fit into her mostly white town. Even still, Evaristo always knew she had something important to say. She lays out those early struggles and how she overcame them in her new memoir, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up. Evaristo told NPR's Michel Martin that she has always been a private person but sharing so many of her secrets for the reader was very liberating.

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Author Tess Hadley's new novel opens with an affair, but that's not really what the book is about. Free Love is set in the 1960s just outside of London and it starts with a wealthy woman in her 40s, Phyllis, sharing a secret kiss with a much younger man who is not her husband (gasp). The kiss has unintended consequences and Phyllis has to figure out what she really wants out of life. Hadley told NPR's Elissa Nadworny that being part of the bourgeois is not something she's familiar with, but she loves to write about it because she doesn't think that world exists anymore.

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There is an Icelandic word, sprakkar, that means outstanding women - and those women are at the heart of the book Secrets Of The Sprakkar: Iceland's Extraordinary Women And How They Are Changing The World. Iceland's first lady and author, Eliza Reid, interviewed women from all walks of life to find out what makes being a woman in Iceland so great. Reid told NPR's Leila Fadel that not everyone knows Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Equality Index for the past 12 years, so she set out to change that.

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Back in 2013 author Anthony Marra wrote a book that is every bit as timely today. A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena takes place in Chechnya, a place very familiar with warring with Russia, in 2004. It's a story about the people - everyday, ordinary people - war and its aftermath impacts. Marra told NPR's Jacki Lyden that he wrote "a novel about people who are trying to transcend the hardships of their circumstances by saving others."

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Today we look at the power of the Chinese government. The first book, How I Survived A Chinese Reeducation Camp, is by Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman who spent years in a detention camp. It's a stark account of human rights atrocities. Haitiwaji told NPR's Scott Simon she feels lucky because millions of people are still suffering. Next is an interview with Chinese businessman Desmond Shum about his book Red Roulette. It's the story of his wife's disappearance and then reappearance. Shum told NPR's Steve Inskeep that when she resurfaced he felt like he was "negotiating with her kidnapper."

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Novelist David Wright Falade learned about the life of Richard Etheridge in the 90s and has been enthralled by him ever since. Born into slavery in North Carolina, he became a sergeant of an all-Black brigade when the Civil War broke out. Black Cloud Rising is a fictionalized version of these events; Etheridge goes back down to North Carolina to free enslaved people and fight guerillas. Falade told NPR's Scott Simon that it was really important for him to try to get to know the human behind the extraordinary acts.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has framed his recent invasion of Ukraine as a "de-nazification" of the country. This is not a new move by Putin. In fact, he used this same rhetoric to attack the Ukranian protesters during the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Back in 2014 historian Timothy Snyder talked to NPR's Robert Siegel about fascism in Ukraine and the rise of Stalinism in Russia. He told Siegel that calling Ukranians Nazis is both a way to confuse the European Union - because they know Nazis were bad - and a way to garner pro-Russian sentiment.

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Author Charmaine Wilkerson's new novel, Black Cake, is all about identity; who we are and how we fit into this world. Estranged siblings, Benny and Byron are left a recording by their late mother after she dies. The recording is full of secrets about their family that force Benny and Byron to reevaluate everything about their lives. Wilkerson told NPR's Kelsey Snell that even though Benny and Byron didn't know everything about their mother, she is still their mother who loved them very much, and that's also a part of their identity.

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The Russian invasion into Ukraine is a world-altering event that has people fearful. Historically, few leaders have navigated their country through these things like Winston Churchill, the subject of Erik Larson's book The Splendid and the Vile. It focuses on the year when Churchill became prime minister of the UK just before the German blitz. Larson told NPR's Steve Inskeep that he was incredibly popular because even though he was realistic about the toll it would take on the country, "he never indicated even an ounce of doubt as to what the ultimate victory was going to be."

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In interviews with the authors of The Black Agenda and Solitary, the issue of criminal justice reform is central. First, writer Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman talks about an essay collection from Black writers that tackles issues the U.S. faces today – that stem from racism and racist policies. She told NPR's Leila Fadel the book is arguing for the humanity of Black people. The second interview is with Alfred Woodfox, who served 43 years in prison – most of those in solitary confinement — for a crime he says he didn't commit. Woodfox told NPR's Scott Simon he struggles with claustrophobia even now.

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Bernardine Evaristo didn't think there were enough books being published about Black British women, so she wrote one herself. Girl, Woman, Other looks at the lives of many different British women, mostly Black women, from 19 to 93 years old. Some of their stories intertwine while others stay separate. Evaristo told NPR's Scott Simon that she wanted "to show the heterogeneity of who we are in this society, and to explore us as fully realized, complex, driven, flawed individuals whose stories are as worthy of telling as anyone else's."

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Noah Hawley is a world builder. He created the TV shows Fargo and Legion, so he is no stranger to getting an audience immersed in his worlds. His new novel Anthem is no different. But it doesn't take that much imagination, despite the fantasy creatures: This world is remarkably similar to ours. Hawley was interested in looking at the state of the world that is getting passed down to future generations. Hawley told NPR's Ayesha Rascoe his goal was to write "a fantasy novel about our real world or a realistic novel about the fantasy world that we're living in." Mission accomplished.

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Author Marlon James is following up Black Leopard, Red Wolf with a new fantasy novel Moon Witch, Spider King. It tells the same story as Black Leopard, Red Wolf but this time it's from the perspective of the character Sogolon as she hunts for a missing child. James is inviting the reader to question his narratives by telling the story twice but from different points of view. He told NPR's Michel Martin that the novels are non-linear in the tradition of African folklore.

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Social science writer Arthur Brooks has figured out how you, yes you, can be happy later in life. He details it all in his new book, From Strength to Strength, but the gist of it is...maybe relax a little. Brooks argues that for people who work too hard to have it all it can be very upsetting when that part of their life is over. The good news is you can start working on your future happiness now. Brooks told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly you have to do the work when you're younger: You can't "leave your happiness up to chance."

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Both interviews today will transport you into the exciting world of classical music. No, really! The first is with Brendan Slocumb, whose new book, The Violin Conspiracy, is a mystery surrounding a musician trying to recover his stolen violin. It's also about how hard it is to be a Black classical musician, Slocumb told NPR's Asma Khalid. The second is Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman's conversation with NPR's Scott Simon. Hindman's memoir Sounds Like Titanic follows her experience touring with an orchestra that wasn't really performing for the audience.

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Author Maeve Higgins starts her new book, Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them, by saying she hopes the pandemic doesn't impart any lessons. This kind of dark humor persists throughout Higgins' book, which is a reflection on America and its many flaws. But, as an immigrant, she can see this country in a way others cannot — with a fresh pair of perhaps more forgiving eyes. Higgins told NPR's Tamara Keith that because she loves this country she wants it to be the best it can be.

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Patriarch Leo Chao is murdered at his restaurant at the beginning of Lan Samantha Chang's new novel The Family Chao. Eventually family secrets and bitterness reveal themselves — much like a Dostoyevsky novel, from whom Chao took a lot of inspiration. But NPR's Scott Simon points out that even though this novel is about a murder, it's quite funny. Chang told Simon that she just enjoyed writing it so much that humor became part of it.

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Author Tara Westover grew up in an extreme survivalist family in Idaho. She and her siblings had no formal education, but she taught herself algebra, aced the entrance exam for BYU and got in. It was the start of her way out from under an often abusive family situation. Westover wrote about her experiences and what it was like for her to totally change her worldview in her memoir, Educated. Westover told Here & Now's Robin Young that she thinks we need to stop judging people for their incorrect opinions if they don't have access to education.

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In honor of Valentine's Day, we are revisiting a conversation with our very own romance expert, Linda Holmes. Her novel Evvie Drake Starts Over is about a woman who is getting ready to leave her husband when she gets a surprising call – he is dead. She finds herself alone until former major league pitcher Dean Tenney, who can't throw a baseball anymore, hides from the media stress in her guest bedroom. Hijinks ensue. Linda Holmes told NPR's Scott Simon that they both had to figure out a new path in life unexpectedly; something most of us can relate to.

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As part of Black History Month, Book of the Day brings you an interview with author Isabel Wilkerson. She followed her book about The Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, with another that looks at why it happened. Caste argues that caste and not racism is actually what Black people were fleeing when they left the Jim Crow South. Wilkerson told Throughline's Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah that the term racism is rooted in hate but caste is about "power and how those other groups manage and navigate and seek to survive in a society that's created with this ranked hierarchy."

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During Black History month, Book of the Day is bringing you some interviews from the archives, including this one with author Octavia Butler. Butler wrote many sci-fi classics, like the Parable series and Kindred, so she's accustomed to imagining different worlds. NPR's Scott Simon asked her back in 2001 to imagine a world without racism. Butler believed that in racism's place we would have to have absolute empathy. But she told Simon that this would most certainly present its own challenges – and we would probably just find something else to fight about.

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To recognize Black History Month, Book of the Day is digging into the archives to bring you some important interviews. In 1977, author Alex Haley told NPR he didn't want to put the main character of Roots, Kunta Kinte, on a slave ship. To prepare for writing that portion of the novel, Haley flew to Africa and caught a voyage home on a cargo ship — sneaking down into the hold after dinner. In the mornings, he would write notes about what he thought Kunta's experience would have been like. He told NPR's Marty Griffen that the experience weighed him down so much it nearly cost him his life.

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As part of Black History Month, we are running interviews from our archives. The Color Purple is about the survival of Black women in a male-dominated world. Author Alice Walker said that she just wrote what happens in the real world. At its core, this is a story of women loving and helping other women. Walker told NPR's Faith Fancher that "one of the reasons I wanted to have strong, beautiful, wonderful women loving each other is because I think that people can deal with that. [...] I think that the people who are uptight and bigoted and afraid in their own lives will have difficulty."

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For the first full week of Black History Month, we dove into our archives to bring you some older interviews by Black authors. The first is an interview from 2009 with writer Toni Morrison about a collection she edited from authors facing censorship called Burn This Book. This conversation is especially relevant today with many important books under scrutiny – and being pulled from library shelves and school curriculums. Morrison, whose books have also been banned in some places as recently as this year, told NPR's Liane Hansen that in some countries censorship can be far more serious.

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The first interview today is with debut novelist Lizzie Damilola Blackburn about her book, Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? The protagonist Yinka is constantly being hounded by her family to get married. But Damilola Blackburn tells NPR's Sarah McCammon that learning to love oneself first can be important. The second interview is with award-winning writer Edmund White who is out with a new book about sex. A Previous Life follows a couple – they are writing to each other about their romantic pasts. White told NPR's Scott Simon that though the book might offend some, he has always written this way.

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Historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote a book back in 2015 that looked at the entirety of human history; from hunter-gatherers to space exploration. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind packs all of this into a mere 400 pages. Harari noted to NPR's Arun Rath that humans have done a great job cultivating power – but where we tend to fall short is translating that power into happiness.

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Author Imani Perry is a child of the South. In her newest book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, she gives the reader a look at the South's complicated history, interwoven with her own personal anecdotes. Even though the South has a difficult history, Perry contends, it provides important context for America today. Perry told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that in order to write this book she had to stop romanticizing the place she calls home – and, instead, look at it starkly.

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Author Jabari Asim is out with a new novel called Yonder. The story follows a group of enslaved men and women who are forced to work on a plantation by day but dream together about freedom – and what's beyond the world they know – at night. Asim told NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer that he always writes with his ancestors looking over his shoulder: "I feel like I have a responsibility to honor that legacy of labor and sacrifice by doing the best I can and to take what it is that I do very seriously."

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After getting his Ph.D., writer Jonathan Malesic struck out in this search for an academic job, so he took a position as a parking attendant across the street from his alma mater. He's had a myriad of jobs since then but Malesic told NPR's Michel Martin that he's never been happier because he was able to maintain such a stark work-life balance. Malesic's new book, The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives, is about how to maintain that balance in any job. And he reminds us that even your dream job is still just a job.

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Two collections of short stories, both alike in playfulness in our fair podcast. The first is with Gwen Kirby whose debut collection of short stories is called, hilariously, Shit Cassandra Saw. It ranges from radioactive cockroaches to tapdancing Twizzlers. Kirby told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that writing this book was a cathartic experience. The second interview is with Helen Oyeyemi about her collection of short stories, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. The stories are fairy tales, though not traditional ones. Oyeyemi told NPR's Steve Inskeep that she likes fairy tales because they endure.

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Maggy Krell is a former California prosecutor who was on the team that took down the infamous sex trafficking site Blackpage back in 2018. Now, she's out with a new book about how they were able to get the website shuttered – and the challenges the team on the case now faces going forward. Reflecting on her time as a prosecutor, Krell told Morning Edition's Rachel Martin that this is the case she's proud of: "This was a case that shifted the national narrative and certainly sent a message to survivors that this shouldn't be normalized, that their experiences matter."

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Author Marc Eliot has written a new biography of country music icon, Merle Haggard. The Hag details Haggard's quite extraordinary life; from breaking into a restaurant (that turned out to be open) and subsequent jail time to his many broken marriages and everything in between. Haggard turned his past failures into songs, writing and singing about his inner turmoil. Eliot told NPR's Steve Inskeep that he thinks the Hag deserves a little more respect: "I think if he were played on the same radio stations that, say, play Frank Sinatra ... he'd be just as accepted. I think he was that good."

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Author of the wildly popular and, at times, controversial A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara, is out with a new novel. To Paradise is an epic – in three parts – sprawling over 700 pages and 200 years about a make-believe New York City. Yanagihara was mostly through writing her story, which features pandemics prominently, when COVID-19 first hit in early 2020. But Yanagihara told NPR's Scott Simon that she was able to keep her story and her fears about the pandemic in reality separate.

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The 2022 Winter Olympics are right around the corner, so to prepare we are bringing you a conversation with skier Lindsey Vonn. Her new memoir, Rise, looks at her road to becoming a ski champion and Olympic medalist. Spoiler alert: it was not all sunshine and roses. Vonn told NPR's A Martinez that she's lucky she is wired in a way that makes negativity a driving force because she has seen the pressure and stress of being an Olympic athlete derail other people's careers.

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The first interview today, Build Your House Around My Body, is by debut novelist Violet Kupersmith and it's about a young Vietnamese woman who disappears; ghosts are involved. She told NPR's Ari Shapiro that she was "attracted to the ghost as a way of getting revenge." The second novel is also about a young woman's disappearance, this time in Haiti. Award winning author Edwidge Danticat's Claire of The Sea Light involves the sea instead of ghosts, though. Danticat told NPR's Rachel Martin that the sea is very important in Haitian Creole.

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Today marks one year since Joe Biden was sworn in as president. It's no secret that politics have become — well...messy in the U.S. — so we thought today would be a good opportunity to take a deep dive into democracy. How much staying power does it have, and why has it started to crumble in countries around the world? Author Anne Applebaum looks at how the world has changed over the past 20 years in her book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure Of Authoritarianism. She told NPR's Steve Inskeep in 2020 that authoritarianism isn't outside the realm of possibility for the U.S.

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Journalist and author Sasha Issenberg has written a book about the history of marriage equality in America. The Engagement details how messy and complicated this fight was at times. Issenberg told NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben that within the LGBT community, there were, and are, many different policy concerns that didn't always gel. Marriage ended up being a top priority for some but not everyone agreed it should be.

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"We are force." This line is originally from a Victor Hugo letter to Cuban independence fighters, but it's also found throughout Gabriela Garcia's novel, Of Women And Salt. The book, new in paperback, is about generations of Cuban and Salvadoran women navigating patriarchal societies. She told NPR's Sarah McCammon that she was especially inspired by this phrase because she "was thinking about all of the multitudes within women - how they're more than just immigrants or mothers or any of these other labels that are sort of imposed on them."

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This Martin Luther King Jr. day we focus on the woman who raised Dr. King, his mother, Alberta. His mother and those of two of his contemporaries take center stage in Anna Malaika Tubbs' book, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped A Nation. Tubbs told 1A's Jenn White that history is often told by and about men, but knowing these women's stories - "taking their lives from the margins and putting them in the center" - is just as important. As Tubbs notes, "If they'd never had these famous sons, they still were worthy of being seen."

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Our first interview today is about a novel that, believe it or not, was actually written before the coronavirus pandemic even started. The End of October, written by Lawrence Wright, is about...a pandemic. But Wright told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly he wishes he hadn't gotten so much of it right. The second interview is with two friends, Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Nair, who were separated by the pandemic. So to connect with each other, they wrote a book of poetry called A Different Distance. They told former NPR host Noel King that the collaboration actually strengthened their friendship.

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Author Xavier Navarro Aquino's new novel, Velorio, takes place in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. This is not a tale of strength and resilience, however. It's about processing grief and being angry at the hand you've been dealt. Aquino told NPR's Eyder Peralta that there is a stereotype about Puerto Ricans being joyful no matter the circumstances but he wanted to show the complete picture, which involved a lot of pain.

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Author James Goodwin has written about brain trauma, which, as you can guess, is something you want to avoid at all costs. His new book, Supercharge Your Brain: How to Maintain a Healthy Brain Throughout Your Life, looks at both the effects of brain damage and how you can boost your brain's health. He told Morning Edition's A Martinez that keeping your brain in good working condition is easier than you might think.

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Juhea Kim's debut novel, Beasts of a Little Land, is about Korea's decades-long fight for independence and the lives it impacted. Kim wanted the novel to focus on people who often get overlooked, which is why one of the main characters in the novel is a courtesan, or a sex worker. Kim told NPR's Elissa Nadworny that "these characters show how we can live in a meaningful way, even when the world is falling apart, even when the sky is falling down."

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu passed away at the age of 90 at the end of 2021. We look back at his legacy by revisiting his 2010 book Made For Goodness. Even after decades of fighting apartheid and seeing the cruelty people were capable of, he still believed that humans were mostly good at their core. Tutu told NPR's Renee Montagne that he was constantly bowled over by people's willingness to forgive.

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